


Two-Player Game

by the_ocean_burned



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Apocalypse Of The Damned, Crying, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Hugging, M/M, Mentions of Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Post-Squip, Swearing, They deal with the shitstorm the SQUIP left behind basically, and all the shit that comes with that, i'll add more if i think of them, mentions of the halloween party, the SQUIP is kinda its own warning, uhh, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 06:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12102333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ocean_burned/pseuds/the_ocean_burned
Summary: What's Player Two without his Player One?





	Two-Player Game

Two weeks after the SQUIP incident found Jeremy bouncing on his heels in front of the back door of the Mells’ house, debating whether or not he was allowed to use the spare key he had been given in seventh grade. He and Michael had tried to go back to normal after they had gotten rid of the SQUIP, but it wasn’t quite the same. Michael was a little more reserved, and Jeremy was a little less inclined to ask what was wrong for fear of overstepping unfamiliar boundaries. Fundamentally, their relationship had not changed, but it felt different. A lot different. True, Michael had still been worried about Jeremy when he and Christine broke up – Jeremy really didn’t hold it against her, since she had figured out that she was aromantic, and they were still friends – and they still played Apocalypse of the Damned – they were on level twelve, now – and got stoned in Michael’s basement on weekends, but there was something off about it all. Something was a little strained, a little tense, a little afraid.

Jeremy had been content to ignore it and hope that it went away with time, but clearly Michael had not, if the 3 AM text Jeremy had received from Michael that morning, stating only _we need to talk_ meant anything. And that was how Jeremy found himself edging closer and closer to an anxiety attack because he was worrying himself to death over whether or not he was allowed to unlock a fucking door.

Eventually, Jeremy just knocked. It took less than a minute for Michael to answer, which meant he had been standing behind the door the entire time, waiting for Jeremy to make up his mind. Anxiety threatened to crush Jeremy’s ribcage. Michael wouldn’t meet Jeremy’s eyes, even as he stepped back to let Jeremy into the house. The twelve-step walk from the backdoor to the three-stair descent into the basement that served as Michael’s bedroom was silent, and Michael’s gaze never left the floor.

At first, Jeremy expected Michael to head for the bean bags in front of the TV, like he usually did. Instead, Michael sat cross-legged at the head of his bed, his eyes fixed on the blankets. After a moment, Jeremy followed suit, sitting gingerly at the foot of the bed. The silence stretched between them, long and uncomfortable. It held all the tension and weirdness that had lived between them since the SQUIP had been deactivated. Since Jake’s Halloween party, actually, but thinking about that night made Jeremy feel like his skin was crawling. So many bad things had happened at that party, and Jeremy didn’t want to relive it.  

“So… you wanted to talk?” Jeremy ventured eventually. Michael nodded slowly, then drew in a shuddering breath and nodded again. Suddenly, Jeremy realized why Michael hadn’t been meeting his eyes. Michael was trying not to cry.

Jeremy could count on one hand the number of times he had seen Michael cry. They had known each other since kindergarten, and even then, Michael had never _cried,_ not really. There had been third grade, the first time Jeremy had gotten shoved in the hallway because some asshole decided that his friend choice made him a good target, but that had only been a few tears and they had only lasted a few seconds, quickly replaced with Michael’s signature smile. There had been sixth grade, when Michael had his first panic attack in the middle of a school hallway because he had forgotten his headphones at home. There had been seventh grade, when Michael had called Jeremy in the middle of the night in tears because he was so afraid of how his parents would react when he came out to them, and then again later that year when Michael had been so relieved that his parents hadn’t cared – they had already figured it out, really – that he had cried out of happiness. And there had been… no. That was it. Jeremy had only ever seen Michael cry four times in his life, and now here he was, Michael hold back tears, likely because of something Jeremy had done inadvertently.

“Jesus – Mikey, are you okay?” Jeremy asked, wincing at how high-pitched his voice sounded. In his head, the ghost of the SQUIP snarled _be more chill, Jeremy._

“Does it _look_ like I’m okay?” Michael snapped, finally lifting his eyes to Jeremy’s, his hands curling into fists.

Jeremy flinched, tried to hide it, and then made himself stop wringing his hands. _Stop that. It’s annoying and distracting,_ the SQUIP’s ghost hissed in his ear. “I-I’m – that was a-a dumb question, I’m sorry.”

 _Stop fucking stuttering,_ the SQUIP’s voice growled. _It’s pathetic and disgusting to listen to._ It wasn’t back, but Jeremy could remember it saying the same thing a hundred times all too clearly, and he tried to squash his stutter out of habit.

“Whatever,” Michael muttered, pushing his glasses up just out of the way enough for him to scrub at his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I’m not trying to yell at you.”

“I’ll understand if you do, though,” Jeremy said, his voice soft with guilt. “I deserve it. I was awful to you, and I know I was, and there wasn’t an excuse for it.”

Michael was avoiding looking at Jeremy again. His hands had relaxed, though. “No, you don’t deserve it. It was the SQUIP’s fault. It made you like that.”

“Yeah, but still,” Jeremy insisted, “you shouldn’t keep yourself from yelling at me if that’s what’s gonna make you feel better. You’ve been off for weeks, Micah.”

Michael started to argue.

“Don’t even try,” Jeremy interrupted. “I’ve known you for twelve years. I can tell when you’re upset, even when you’re trying to hide it.”

Michael sighed. His hands had clenched into fists again. “All right, yeah, fine, I’m fucking pissed. Happy now?  I’m still not gonna start yelling at you.”

“You should.”

Michael looked at Jeremy like he had just told Michael that the SQUIP had been a pleasant thing to have in his head. Jeremy held up his hands placatingly. “Listen. You’re angry, and y-yelling is, like, therapeutic-c or some shit. A-and if you’re not angry with me – w-which you should be – you’re angry with the SQ-QUIP, which is still sort of in my head, even-n if it’s not active. Either way, yelling a-at me is technically yelling at the thing that’s m-making you angry, even if it’s by extension or w-whatever. So go for it. Scream at me all-l you want.”

_God, you can’t even get rid of that childish stutter._

“You’re not a thing,” Michael mumbled, and Jeremy very nearly rolled his eyes. Of course, out of everything he had just said, _that_ was what Michael had picked up on.

“But you’re right,” Michael continued. “I _should_ be made at you. Hell, I _am_ mad at you. If you hadn’t needed to be ‘cool’ so badly, you wouldn’t have trusted the SQUIP. You wouldn’t have had a SQUIP in the first place, and none of this would have happened!” Michael’s voice rose steadily in both volume and intensity. Jeremy was vaguely glad that no one was home. _“You_ chose the SQUIP, and _you_ chose to listen to it, and _you_ chose to abandon me at that fucking Halloween party. Do you have _any_ idea what that did to me, Jeremy?”

He did know, because he knew Michael, but Jeremy shook his head anyway, to be sure that Michael had a reason to keep venting. The tears were back, dripping down Michael’s cheeks slowly as he glared at Jeremy.

“You knew,” Michael insisting, his voice quieting a little with barely-tethered rage. “You fucking _knew_ what that would do. You know what – what that word does to me, and you said it _anyway._ You know the worst part? That wasn’t even the SQUIP’s fault! That was all _you;_ you said it yourself! So how long will it be before you decide to pull something like that again, Jeremy? When are you going to abandon me for your ‘cool’ friends next? When? At least give me a fucking heads up, so I can make sure to clear my damned schedule and make room for a fucking panic attack next time!”

Michael’s words seemed to have run out, and he deflated as his anger left him, but he was still crying. Jeremy sat in silence for a little while, Michael’s choked breaths making him feel like he was suffocating. Guilt threatened to drown him, and his eyes burned with the force of his own oncoming tears. He hadn’t meant for this to happen. This had never been what Jeremy had wanted. He had fucked up big time, and he didn’t know what to do to fix it.

Jeremy spent a few minutes trying to figure out what to say. There wasn’t much he could do to make this better – the SQUIP had made sure of that – but he could hopefully make Michael stop crying, at least. The sound of his soft, half-muffled sobs made Jeremy feel like the world was tilting on a too-steep axis and was making it hard to think instead of reaching over and hugging Michael as tightly as he could.

 “There won’t be a next time,” Jeremy eventually said, glad that he managed to quash his stutter even if his voice was strained and tense with worry.

Michael made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and the most mirthless laugh Jeremy had ever heard, clearly disbelieving. Jeremy shook his head and leaned closer to Michael. They were only a couple feet away at most, but it felt like miles.

“There won’t be a next time,” Jeremy repeated. “I won’t ever do that to you again. I refuse. Th-there won’t ever be another SQUIP. There won’t be another Halloween-n party. I swear to god, I won’t do that to you again.”

“You did it once,” Michael hissed, a surprising amount of venom in his tone that almost made Jeremy flinch. “There’s no way you actually mean that.”

“I _do_ mean it,” Jeremy insisted, a little shocked by the heat in his voice. “That was the SQUIP. It’s gone now, and I’m here, and I’m not gonna leave. Fuck that. You’re my Player One; you can’t have a Player Two without a Player One, can you?”

Michael scrubbed his cheeks dry, though his effort was a little useless, since he was still crying. “You said you had had enough alcohol that it had shut up.”

Jeremy shrugged a little. “It wasn’t f-fully functional, but it was there enough to fuck with me. I mean – it was speak-king in Japanese, but it could still – fuck. It could l-literally control my body. L-like, paralyze me and shit. What I said to you at that party… it was unacceptable, even if it was purely the SQUIP-P, and I know that. But it _w-was_ the SQUIP, and I will never, _ever_ say something like that to you ag-gain. I promise.”

Michael looked up at Jeremy, his gaze watery and searching. Whatever he found clearly was a good thing, because Michael lurched forward and wrapped his arms around Jeremy’s neck in a tight hug. It took Jeremy a moment to respond, because a hug was the last thing he had been expecting, but when the situation registered, he wrapped his arms around Michael’s middle and returned the hug, relief threatening to overwhelm him. Michael wasn’t angry anymore. Michael would be okay. They were still friends.

Jeremy didn’t know how long they sat there. It was long enough for Michael to bury his face into the crook of Jeremy’s shoulder and cry himself out. It was long enough for Jeremy to notice that Michael was shaking and that Michael’s hair was almost confusingly soft against Jeremy’s neck. It was long enough that when Michael eventually did move away, his eyes rimmed red and smiling a little, Jeremy was reluctant to let go.

“Didn’t mean to cry all over you,” Michael said, laughing slightly as he brushed the remnants of his tears from the corners of his eyes.

“We’re saps, man. It was bound to happen eventually,” Jeremy replied with a shrug and a grin.

Michael laughed. It was a good noise to hear. “True, true. Apocalypse of the Damned?”

“Hell yes,” Jeremy said enthusiastically, sliding off the bed and flopping into the beanbag that he had claimed as his years ago.

Grinning, Michael sat down in the other beanbag chair and passed Jeremy his controller. Relief was still sitting in Jeremy’s chest, blissfully heavy. Things felt normal again, comfortable and familiar, like a warm jacket. This was good.

Level twelve had proved to be a bitch and a half to beat. There were too many stairs, which Jeremy had never been good at dealing with efficiently, and too many ambushes, which never ceased to take Michael by surprise, even if he knew they were coming. As such, they had been stuck on level twelve for the full two weeks they had been playing video games together again. Clearly, though, part of their difficulty with the level had lived on the uneven ground that had been between them.

It took them one try to beat the level.

“Yes!” Jeremy shouted, throwing a fist into the air. He turned to Michael, grinning like a maniac, and found Michael’s lips pressed to his own without any warning.

For a moment, everything inside Jeremy went still. Part of this was due to confusion, but the other part was… something else. It was warm, that was all Jeremy knew. Again, surprise delayed Jeremy’s reaction just half a second. He lowered his hand and tanged his fingers in the hair at the base of Michael’s skull, enjoying the feel of Michael’s curls looping around his fingers. They stayed that way for a second, or a minute, or an hour, or a year; Jeremy didn’t know and didn’t care. His world had been reduced to Michael’s lips – slightly chapped and a little scarred, courtesy of years of Michael chewing anxiously on them – against Jeremy’s own and the soft, fuzzy glow that had taken up residence in his lungs.

And then Michael pulled away. He looked flustered and vaguely panicked. Jeremy’s cheeks felt hot and his mouth was warm with the phantom heat of Michael’s. As Michael moved away, Jeremy’s hand fell to his side.

“Fuck,” Michael breathed, running his fingers agitatedly through his hair. “Fuck, fuck, I didn’t mean to do that.”

 “Michael,” Jeremy said. Or maybe he just thought it, since Michael didn’t seem to have heard. The warmth in Jeremy’s chest hadn’t quite dissipated enough for him to think straight.

“I’m sorry, that wasn’t what I meant to do, we only just now got our shit together _platonically_ and I –”

 _“Michael,”_ Jeremy said again, and this time he was certain he said it, because Michael stopped rambling and turned his wide-eyed gaze to Jeremy. He leaned forward and pressed his forehead to Michael’s. Michael looked confused and more than a little flustered.

“Shut up,” Jeremy mumbled, and kissed Michael again.

Michael’s lips curled up into a smile, and Jeremy knew they’d be okay, no matter what bullshit life threw at them. After all, what was a Player Two without his Player One?

**Author's Note:**

> i've only listened to the musical's soundtrack guys so if it's weird or ooc that's why rip


End file.
